


Make the Most of It

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [249]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Affection, Avengers: Endgame, Kissing, Love, M/M, Reunions, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-06 20:09:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18395492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: “What the hell are you wearing?” Bucky says.





	Make the Most of It

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Inspired by [this](https://flyingpotatismos.tumblr.com/post/184005471325/steven-grant-rogers-has-never-worn-a-henley-shirt).

“What the hell are you wearing?” Bucky says.

The words are muffled against Steve’s shoulder, breathed deep into cotton and bone. The metal arm is slung around his body, biting into his back, and the other is curled around his neck, five warm, shaking fingers wound into his hair. Bucky smells like ozone, like the last drops of a rainstorm, and he’s here hugging Steve, somehow. A miracle. He’s alive.

“A shirt,” Steve says. He lets his mouth touch the turn of Bucky’s throat, grateful for the locked door, the privacy. The time away from the team’s prying eyes. There are a million reunions happening all over the world, anyway; everybody out there has somebody back, somebody to hold on to, and oh, god, it’s something wonderful.

“A little small on you, isn’t it?”

“I think it fits fine.”

A snort, something halfway to a laugh. “Yeah, ‘cause you’ve stretched the hell of out it.”

He nuzzles the clutch of Bucky’s pulse and hugs him hard, that much harder. “I’ll buy you a new one.”

“No, you won’t.” Bucky turns his face and rubs his beard, his tears against Steve’s collar, his neck. “But you are gonna let me steal it back.”

“I missed you,” Steve says. The feeling in him is fierce, suddenly, a bolt of the terror he felt in that first moment when he’d turned to find Bucky and seen only ash; a terror that had never left but only deepened in the face of each terrible day, each lonely, soul-crushing night. There was so much wrong in the world, so many gone, and yet at night when he pretended to sleep it wasn’t the billions he’d thought of, the parents and children and spouses and friends. No. He’d thought of just one: this man who's clinging to him, who loves him, who's left him too many times for one life. _Never_ , Steve thinks, ferocious. _Never, ever again_. “I missed you so fucking much, Buck.”

Bucky makes a sound like something soft tearing and lifts his chin and then they’re kissing, loud and sloppy and everywhere, trying to touch, trying to take all of each other at once, like the kids they were once, keenly aware that they had only a few moments before someone’s parent would be home or someone would pass by this alley or come back from patrol so they’d damn well make the most of it, take all they could from it, before they had to crash back into the real world. It feels like that that now: desperate, each kiss deep and greedy, each turn of their palms over the other one’s skin a minor miracle because somewhere, way down, they’re half expecting the other person to disappear.

It’s like kissing a dozen Buckys at once: the smirky teenager; the ever-ready roommate; the brother-in-arms whose eyes were darker, full of newly-learned pain; the man who came back haunted, tarnished, something in his soul shadowed, too. All those men and this one, too, this man with long hair and a beard and a need in him, a sweetness, that make Steve want to weep.

“Hey, baby,” Bucky pants, straddling Steve’s hips, pinning him perfect to the soft spread of the bed. “Less thinking and more touching, ok?”

“But, Buck...” There’s too much to say, too much that he feels, and looking up into Bucky’s face, flushed towards roses, only makes the words harder to grasp. “I love--”

Bucky licks the words away, spreads his palms over Steve's chest and digs a little into the stretch of what was once his shirt, a gray, battered Henley that smelled like him the first time Steve yanked it off the hanger and shoved his arms through the sleeves. Bucky digs and he smiles and he says as clearly with his fingers as he does with his words: "I know. But instead of talking about it, why don't you show me, huh?"


End file.
